A D R I A N

The pounding won’t stop. At first, I think it’s the ocean hammering the windows, or maybe my pulse thrumming too loud in my skull, but then I hear it. My name again, sharper this time. Urgent. Ethan’s voice cutting through the morning

“Elara—wake up,” I mutter, but she’s already stirring, blinking against the early light. Sheets tangled at her hips, hair a dark spill across my chest. She looks soft, safe. Mine.

The door rattles again.
“Adrian.. open it. Now.”

I grab the first thing within reach, pants, half a shirt. Ethan pushes in before I can speak, face carved from stone. He holds up a tablet like a weapon. It’s us.  Boardwalk. Stairwell. My suite door. Her pressed against me, mouth on mine, timestamp glowing like a countdown.  The caption beneath: Valcrosse Heir’s Forbidden Affair: Doctor on Call or Call Girl?

My throat goes dry. “Where did..”
“Everywhere,” Ethan says. “By dawn, it was trending in six languages.”

Elara sits up, sheet clutched to her chest, blinking at the glare. Her breath catches as she sees it. “God.”

Another alert pings, Marina this time. “Don’t talk to anyone,” she says through the comm. “Board meeting in thirty. Sponsors want blood.”

I scroll, can’t stop. Every feed is a slow-motion implosion:
#SeraphineScandal.
#DoctorHeirAffair.
#LegacyInQuestion.

And the comments.. God, the comments. Elara’s face is everywhere, cropped, dissected, stripped of the tenderness it held an hour ago. I can almost feel her shrink beside me, pulling the sheet tighter like armor.

“They’ll crucify her,” Ethan mutters.

“No,” I say, voice hoarse. “They’ll come through me first.”

By the time I step into the glass-walled conference room, it’s already done. The headlines blaze across every screen. My father’s face stares back, drained of color. My mother’s message still waits, unopened and unread.

Marina stands near the end of the table, fingers trembling as she scrolls through crisis scripts. “We can spin this,” she says too fast. “Say she was consulting off-hours, a medical emergency..”

“No.” My voice comes out rough. “You can’t spin what they’ve already decided to see.”

Isabella’s call connects before I can silence it. Her voice fills the room, sharp and steady as ever. “Tell me you’re not about to destroy this family’s reputation for a woman you barely know.”

“I know her.”

“You’ve known her for weeks.”

“Long enough to trust her more than half the people in this room.”

The silence that follows is colder than the marble floors, Damian exhales softly through the speaker. “Son, if you care about her, protect her, but not like this. Let Marina handle the optics.”

“The optics are the problem.” I slam a hand on the table. “Everyone wants serenity until it bleeds.”

Marina winces but doesn’t argue, because she knows I’m right; she’s just too well-trained to admit it. One of the sponsors: Klein, the pharmaceutical executive leans forward, face red and self-important. “You jeopardized a billion-dollar brand for a fling. My company doesn’t back instability.”

“She’s not a fling.”

“Then what is she, Adrian? Because the tabloids say..”

“They don’t get to define her.” My chair scrapes back, the sound loud enough to sting. “You can all strip my title, pull your sponsorships, write your press releases, but if you think I’ll let you drag her name through the mud to save face, you’ve forgotten who built this island.”

The room ripples with outrage, shock and calculation. Marina whispers something to her assistant, already typing damage control. Isabella sighs over the speaker, disappointment like smoke. “Then you’ve made your choice.”

I look at the sea beyond the glass, my empire, my inheritance, everything they’ve ever used to keep me in line.

“Yeah,” I say quietly. “I have.”

The press conference starts before anyone can stop me. Cameras swarm the lobby, flashes turning the air electric, Marina hisses that it’s suicide, but I barely hear her. Ethan just nods once, the silent approval of a man who’s seen worse wars. I take my place at the mic and it crackles alive. The press blinks back at me like vultures waiting to feed.

“I know why you’re all here,” I start, voice steady though my pulse isn’t. “And I know what you’ve seen.”

The murmurs hush, the headline boards behind them still loop the same grainy photo, her in my arms, my hand at her back, both of us caught in a frame that shouldn’t exist.

“I’m not here to deny it.” Gasps ripple and Marina actually chokes on air.

“The woman in those photos is Dr. Elara Quinn,” I continue. “She’s the lead physician at Isla Seraphine and the reason we still have a clean safety record. She’s saved lives here, mine included. She’s also someone I.. ” My voice catches, just enough to make it human. “Someone I care about. Deeply.”

The crowd stirs, journalists trading glances, a few scribbling faster.

“If this is the cost of honesty,” I say, “then I’ll pay it, but if you print another lie about her, another insult, another insinuation that she’s anything less than extraordinary, then you’ll answer to me directly.”

The flashbulbs go wild,  I can already see the headlines forming: Valcrosse Heir Confesses, Love Over Legacy. I step back from the mic, heartbeat hammering in my throat. Somewhere in the chaos, I catch a glimpse of her at the edge of the crowd. She’s not supposed to be here, Ethan must have tried to keep her away, but she’s standing there anyway, eyes wide, lips parted, watching me ruin myself for her.

I don’t regret it. Not one goddamn word, because for the first time, this doesn’t feel like performance. It feels like the truth.

The lobby empties fast after the conference, but the echo of flashes clings to me like static. My ears still ring with it, every camera, every gasp, every word I said that I can’t take back. Ethan walks beside me in silence up the private stairs, he doesn’t try to speak, just keeps a hand near my shoulder like he expects me to collapse. Maybe he’s not wrong.

When we reach my suite, she’s there, standing near the window, barefoot, hair loose, phone dark in her hand, she must have slipped past security. For a second, neither of us moves.

Her eyes are rimmed red. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I know,” I say. “But I did.”

She shakes her head, voice quiet but shaking. “They’re going to ruin you.”

“Maybe,” I admit. “But they don’t get to ruin you.”

I cross the room before I’ve decided what I’m going to say. The space between us hums with everything unsaid. I can still smell the salt on her skin, the faint trace of soap from her hands.

“You think I care about titles?” I ask. “I’ve worn them like armor for years and none of them meant anything until you looked at me like I was human again.”

She exhales hard, like that hurts to hear. “Adrian..”

“No. Listen.” My throat burns. “I’ve spent my whole life learning how to perform. Today was the first time I told the truth in public and meant it.” She looks up at me then, and I see the battle in her, fear and pride twisted together, her hands trembling when I catch them.

“You can’t save me from fallout,” she whispers.

“I’m not trying to save you.” My voice cracks. “I’m standing next to you.”

Something inside me breaks then, the last bit of distance, I press my forehead to hers, just breathing. The air between us smells like sea and smoke and everything I’m about to lose.

“I meant every word,” I told her. “Even the ones that cost me everything.”

For an hour, we didn’t speak, we just breathed in the same air, waiting for something to break. Marina bursts in without knocking, her face white as printer paper. “They’re pulling out,” she says. “Klein’s already frozen his endowment. The Swiss group just issued a public statement—‘reviewing affiliation with Valcrosse Luxe.’”

I stand. “All of them?”

“Half so far. The rest will follow if this keeps trending.” She holds up her phone, screen glowing like a wound. #BoycottValcrosse is already climbing.

Elara stiffens beside me, voice low. “This is because of me.”

“No,” I said immediately. “This is because of them.”

Marina shakes her head. “You can’t fix this with speeches, you went off-script, Adrian. They wanted control, and you gave them honesty. They don’t know what to do with that.”

“Then let them learn,” I say.

She laughs once, broken. “You’ll lose everything.” I glance at Elara, who’s still standing there in the same wrinkled clothes from last night, hair unbrushed, eyes fierce even when scared.

“Not everything,” I answered quietly.

Marina’s phone buzzes again, she looks down and swears. “It’s the board, they want an emergency vote on leadership.”

That lands like a physical hit. “A vote? what kind of vote?”

“Succession,” she whispers. “They’re moving to suspend your authority until the scandal is contained.”

The words hollow the air between us, I nod once, slow. “Tell them I’ll attend, tell them I’m not hiding.”

Marina hesitates, then leaves, heels sharp against marble. The door shuts, and the silence is different now, thicker, almost sacred. Elara crosses the room, stopping in front of me. “You just gave them your empire,” she whispers.

I touch her cheek, rough and unsteady. “Maybe it’s time someone else deserved it.” Outside, the cameras flash again, like lightning before the storm that’s still coming.